My little gardens have reached their personal autumns. Won't last long; growing stuff indoors makes you less vulnerable too seasonal changes. The real autumn is noticable too, however, the plants don't press themeselves against the windows anymore, and the added light becomes more and more important.
The reasons behind the personal autumns are my lack of time for the gardens combined with bugs. I have thrips in two windows. At first I planned drastic cures; to empty the windows entirely, clean them and then leave them empty for two weeks. Felt boring though, I mean; two entire weeks without growing anything. So I decided on a milder version. I leave one of the windows be for the moment. I grow my herbs there, and they do fine as long as I spray them with water a few times a day. Thrips don't like a humid climate. The other window will host my tiger nuts. Tiger nuts grows like a weed (ahaha) thrips or no thrips, and since it's the tubers you eat I can spray the grass above as much as I like.
But spring is not far away. Today I brought out my seed envelopes to what I'll sow today or tomorrow. My plan is to do new sowing every other week during some months to see how well this meets the needs and demands for vegetables in this household. One or two times a week I can already add vegetables for my lunch completely out of the containers. The goal to feed the entire family comes closer.
As you see on the picture I have lots of envelopes. I buy seeds like others buy fabric, and I haven't even opened some of them. Adding to that is the seeds I took from my calamondin and a bunch of tasty grapes we bought. It was with a bit of anguish that I selected what to grow this time:
*Common purslane
*Iceplant
*Salad 'Frisée d'Amerique'
*Calamondin
*Grapes
I'm counting on the calamondin and the grapes to be difficult to grow, so I'll sow them only for fun. To be honest I don't even know what I'll do with a couple of calamondin plants - I guess I'll give them away. Grapeleaves are edible, so they do have a place in this garden. Gadgeteer as I am I'm already inventing contraptions to make it possible to move the plants and provide them with added light.
I'll replant the tiger nuts as well. This includes sterilising soil, boiling soil walls and cleaning boxes. My friends; I'll put my body through a training session a bodybuilder would be proud of.
4 comments:
I'm watching your indoor garden experiments with great interest, (and learning about plants I'd never heard of--Tiger Nuts?! ) Wouldn't it be nice if spring came as quickly as your fall and spring are happening--but then of course maybe we wouldn't appreciate spring quite so much if that was the case.
Hej, I just found you by the weblog awards page and had to give you a score over there. Of course I had to support a fellow Swede :-)
Lycka till, hoppas du blir en av finalisterna!
Interesting garden blog you have over here!!!
I had gardening as an interest before my really bad back problems put an end to that :-(
No time either, since I did a lot of traveling instead. But I'm still very fond of reading about it.
Jodi: I'm glad you do. The tiger nut can also be called duck potato, if that's more familiar. I'll make a post about them soon, since I've harvest a few "nuts" for the first time.
The best spring, I think, would be one after a christmas card winter, with lots of snow etc. etc. I hope this is still possible in my part of Sweden.
captain lifecruiser: Thanks! I really appreciate it.
Jag hoppas också att jag blir en av finalisterna :-) (Den här bloggen finns för övrigt också på svenska på http://parkettodlaren.blogspot.com/)
Sorry to hear about your back. Life gives us nasty surprises sometimes :-( (Nice design on your blog btw. - and I did like the pictures from Uppsala.)
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